The Mothers of May: The Difficult Democratization of the Genocidal State in Brazil

In July of the same year three mothers began to meet in order to visit police stations, investigate motives behind the deaths, and interview authorities. On the one-year anniversary of the murders, they led a protest and mass with 1,000 people who were carrying signs that read: “The ones who kill the innocent are the criminals.” The majority of the victims lived in Baixada Santista. “The state shelved the cases and did not prosecute any police officers.” The numbers speak for themselves: the state admitted there were 493 deaths from firearms between May 12 and 20, of which 47 were killed by the PCC. “Therefore the police killed 446 people,” Débora concludes.

First, they decided to call themselves the Mothers of May and they set up the Baixada Santista Association of Mothers and Relatives of Victims of Violence. Eventually they were even approached by people affected by the military dictatorship who hadn’t had the strength to come forward on behalf of their own family members. When the Mothers of May appeared, it gave them the courage to denounce the events of decades prior. “Now we’re 17 mothers just in Baixada and 4 more in Sao Paulo. We already have groups in 13 states made up of family members affected by the military police,” she says with pride. Their organization collaborates with the Network Against Violence in Rio as well as mothers from Espiritu Santo, Minas Gerais, Belem, Pará, Acre and Pernambuco, and other important states.

When Débora speaks, even when she gets upset, she does so with a certain serenity. “Our meetings are very painful. We cry. We suffer anguish because the impunity is what hurts the most. People raise a child and the state kills it. Mothers don’t symbolize death, but life. During the meetings people don’t accept what happened. They cry when they see a photo of their child. I’m being treated for depression. I’m a widow because my husband died in a similar way as my son did … and I have a brother who was disappeared.” From what one hears in the Bahia Social Forum, Débora’s reality seems to be shared by many Brazilian families.

Nonetheless, these are not just the opinions of a mother in distress. The book Crimes of May published six months after the events by the CONDEPE (State Council for the Defense of Human Rights, of Sao Paulo), an independent commission composed of representatives from the Federal Attorney General’s Office, the Medicine Regional Council, the Public Defender’s Office (CREMESP), and various human rights groups, reached the same conclusions as Débora.

Desiré Carlos Callegari, the president of CREMESP, claims that among those killed in May the majority were male (96.3%) and young (45% between the ages of 21 and 31 years old; 16.5% between 31 and 41). On May 15, each victim received an average of 5.8 gunshot wounds. Of the 493 dead, 43 were killed by delinquents (23 military police, 7 civil policemen, 3 municipal policemen, 9 prison guards, and 4 common citizens). Seventeen were prisoners who had revolted and 109 died in confrontations. However, 87 were murdered by unidentified killers “bearing signs of execution with police participation.”4

Criminal expert Ricardo Molina de Figueiredo, a member of the independent commission, analyzed the cases labeled “resistance” killings, which totaled 124 the week of May 12th through the 20th. The study of all the cases revealed that the majority of the victims were shot in a highly lethal area, that the shots were fired at close range, and that there was a great number who were shot “from head to toe.”

This allowed him to purport that “the combination of these factors indicate a situation similar to execution and not a shoot-out where the shooters are moving around. In an incident of confrontation it would be very improbable that these three components coincide, which allows us to conclude that 60 to 70% of the analyzed cases were executions.”5

The Public Defender’s Office in Sao Paulo says more or less the same. Pedro Gilberti, assistant general public defender, reports that there was faulty conduct and abuse of authority. The worst thing is that those elements, “until now did not lead to accusations, having been buried in the common grave of the archives, where impunity rests.”6

Thanks to this commission and the work of the Mothers of May, the belief that there were many summary executions stuck in the public’s mind. The second conclusion was put forth by the state: once again, it received impunity. The situation is dire because in Sao Paulo the murder rate began to rise again after 10 years of decline. In 2009, although violent crime continued to decline in the state capital, in the peripheral, inland, and coastal cities violence is climbing. In a single year in Baixada Santista the homicides grew by 37%.7

To understand how all of this can be occurring in a country which aspires to be a global player, a country where democracy has reigned for 20 years, one that benefits from a progressive government like that of Lula’s, and which will host the Olympic Games and the World Cup, one must investigate from a variety of perspectives.

Rafael Dias, from the NGO Global Justice, believes that Brazil exists as a genocidal state because “there was never a rupture between the slave-state and the modern state, and we have now an elitist state that operates through violence to marginalize the indigenous, the black, and the poor, who were all considered threats or dangerous classes.”8 In his opinion, “It’s a question of state, not government.” That’s why there were no significant changes with the installation of the left-wing government in 2003. “Now we have the model of militarization of the favelas because the poor continue to be considered a permanent enemy, and that is the logic of public security.”

The Left continues to treat inhabitants of favelas like lumpen, people marginalized in society, explains Rafael Dias. “The Left does not understand the situation of poor people. Because they aren’t organized in unions or parties, they don’t form part of the leftist political agenda. The leftists think they can resolve the problem applying compensation policies like the Bolsa Familia, or “Family Allowance” Program. We’re repeating the three principles that existed during slavery, the triple P: pao, pau y pano (bread, wood, and cloth).”

Mauricio Campos is an engineer and he works in the Network against Violence of Rio de Janeiro, which was born in 2003 when favelas mobilized against police violence. “Our work consists in judicial service to the people who suffer from violence. The main difficulty of working in the favela is state violence, the fear, the massacres, because the people who have permanent jobs are exposed to the same threats that terrorize the poor population.”9 Campos believes that the Acari massacre, in 1990 in Rio, where 11 youths were killed, provoked a change in society because “it was the first time there was an immense collective reaction from the families of victims.”

Campos maintains that one cannot avoid the issue of “economic links between organized crime and the police. The delinquents don’t want any charges to be brought against the police because they always solve problems with bribes. According to social activists, the police are the main problem because they always attack social organizations.” He adds that, “Violence against those living in the favelas has been on the rise because the Brazilian elite have been world pioneers in attacking the poor before they can organize. In other countries elitist violence is reactionary, but here it is preemptive because we have a very capable bourgeoisie, the most lucid in Latin America, which possesses an apparatus of domination like the TV network Red Globo that you don’t see in other countries.”

The serious problem with drug-trafficking, in his opinion, is that “it is the backbone of all criminal activity, and a big umbrella for all illegal activities.” On the other hand, the increase in struggles of the 70s and 80s “was resolved by repression under the dictatorship, but when democracy returned the direct repression stopped and the criminalization of the poor began. It is an uncontrollable process, because the police complex has an incredible autonomy to the point that no government dares confront it.”

This is one of the key points: social change is denied to the poor, black, and young majority. “If there was a strong social movement, many of the youth would stop empathizing with the criminals and start relating to the social struggle. Young people are swallowed up by a process. They don’t choose a crime, they’re just bystanders, and sometimes they want to seek revenge against the police because there is no justice, social organization, nor guerrilla warfare. The only way out is by joining drug-trafficking,” Campos concludes.

Social activists aren’t the only ones with this type of analysis. It’s worth listening to one of the most important conservative voices of the political spectrum, speaking from one of the highest offices that had to confront organized crime in Sao Paulo, Governor Claudio Lembo.

The day Lembo stepped down from his position, on December 31, 2006, he gave an interview to Folha de Sao Paulo in which he spoke about the tumultuous days of May. “During the crisis of the PCC, figures from the white minority wanted ‘eye for an eye’ justice. They wanted to kill everyone to save themselves and the white minority. That was what irritated me the most. We were in an extremely difficult situation and we had to show that the state could win within the law. They called me on the phone, and a few individuals came to see me.”10

Lembo is a conservative who now belongs to the Democratic Party (DEM) and who held departmental positions in Sao Paulo during the military dictatorship. The journalist from Folha inquired about what the white minority asked for, to which Lembo responded very clearly: “For the police to go to the streets, at night, and carry out executions.” He never said who these people were who wanted vengeance even though they were never directly affected by the violence. However it is clear that they belong to the minority of the rich who utilize the state for their own benefit.

During the conflict, Lembo said that the violence will only end when the white minority changes their mentality. “We have a very bad bourgeoisie, a very perverse white minority. The bourgeoisie is going to have to reach into their pockets to help sustain the social misery of Brazil in the sense of creating jobs, expanding education, increasing solidarity, and opening up more dialogue and correspondence about situations.”

“In what ways are they responsible?” asks the journalist. “During the historical formation of Brazil, when slaves were liberated, the ones who received restitution were the slave owners, not the free slaves as it happened in the United States. Brazil is a cynical country.”11

If this is what a conservative man thinks and feels, a near 80-year-old lawyer and university professor, a governor in charge of repressing delinquents and to some extent a member of the elite he critiques, “What might the poor, black, unemployed, continually persecuted young people between 15 and 18 years old feel?”

Débora explains it in her own way: “The poor don’t have the right to reach positions of power. Those are reserved for children of the elite.”